Well Water Problems, Please help!

[ArayT]

I've been using this well for about a year. I'm having problems w/ my well water turning my filter black, this just started and my wife is complaining that everything is getting stained an orange color. I installed a softener a fews months back to take care of the problems. Hardness "I think" has gone away. I've tested the water again after the filter (thats turning black) and before the softener. The following are the results,
PH- 7.6, calculated Hardness 161ppm, Iron- .25ppm, Manganese- ..05pm, Magnesium- 1.4ppm, Calcium- 62.2, Sodium- 2.9ppm, Silica, 34.74ppm
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[speedbump]

I assume this filter your talking about is an inline so called "whole house filter". If so, it's doing you no good at all. Just remove the cartridge.

Sounds like you needed an iron filter more than a water softener. Even though 9 grains hard is not considered soft, its not too bad either. .25 ppm of iron will stain though and an iron filter would have removed it. The black is probably sulphur. Does the water have any odor to it?

[Gary Slusser]

An orange color says oxidized iron (rust), which your softener will remove along with the hardness and manganese.

The black in the cartridge is probably from oxidized manganese or galvanized pipe unless you have H2S gas (sulfur odor).

Unless you have a softener that requires a prefilter or the water is visibly dirty, remove the cartridge. The softeners needing a prefilter are the big box stores (Sears Whirlpool etc.) and Kinetico, the rest don't. A prefilter can cause a pressure or flow loss that causes the softener to fail to backwash properly and that ruins resin.

[ArayT]

My system is a fleck 7000, 40k. I'll remove the filter and try that. I do have a short piece of gal'v pipe in my system which I'll remove also. Yes I do ocassionally have a sulfur smell, my wife says more often than I realise. Is there a way I can make sure my resin is not ruined and will this take care of the iron? A few weeks back I realised my softener was not using any potassium, it had bridged inside my container. Would you recommend using salt vs potassium? No health problems, just thought it would be better.
Thanks, Ray